Farm Sanctuary co-founder wants all animals to live well

Posted: Sunday, April 20, 2008

If there's one thing that might unite the humanity in all of us - or at least most of us, anyway - it's this: We see a sad-faced, wide-eyed dog in need of a home and love, and it pretty much breaks our hearts.

In the case of Gene Baur, it wasn't just neglected dogs that had that effect, it was all animals. And his love for creatures led him in 1986 to co-found Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York, the nation's leading farm animal protection organization that provides homes to farm animals that have been abused and, as was the case 18 years ago for a little calf named Opie, discarded and left to die.

In 1990, Baur, who earned his master's degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University, was investigating a New York stockyard. While there, he found a newborn calf, still wet from birth, literally freezing to death in a cold alleyway. Born to a dairy cow, Opie had been separated from his mother and taken to the stockyard, likely to be sold for veal. When Baur asked about the calf, the stockyard worker said, "I have to bury him later today."

Baur offered to take the barely living calf off the stockyard's hands, which he was allowed to do, and took it to a veterinarian, who was reluctant to treat the calf at first - saying it only had about a five percent chance to live. But at Baur's urging, the veterinarian agreed. The calf was taken to live at the then-new Farm Sanctuary.

"He recovered and ended up weighing well over 2,000 pounds and standing more than 6 feet high at the shoulder, and becoming a wonderful, gentle animal - a gentle giant," Baur says.

There's more than a little pride in his voice talking about Opie, but some sadness, too. Opie died a few weeks ago at age 18, from cancer.

CULTURAL STUDIES: Listen as arts and entertainment editor Julie Phillips talks with Gene Baur, Farm Sanctuary co-founder and president, about some of the issues involving human consumption of animals:

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"We miss him, but we'll always remember him," Baur says.

For Baur, who's helped Farm Sanctuary expand to a second location in California, it's all part of a larger mission, to make people aware of the fate of farm animals and to save these animals from lives of suffering. In the case of factory farming, he says, animals are treated as commodities - objects - rather than the thinking, feeling, living creatures they are. As a result, they're subjected to cruel practices and live in a general state of pain and suffering.

Baur, whose book "Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food" (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster) was published in March, will be in Athens on Tuesday to discuss the book and the topic at the University of Georgia. He's in the midst of a stint of signings, and, speaking from an airport on the way to an engagement in Florida, is clear and direct in his mission.

But he doesn't preach.

"I try to appeal to people's sense of compassion and sense of kindness," he says, and for the most part finds success.

"Sometimes people who are mistreating animals and engaged in industrialized animal agriculture assume that their practices are appropriate and necessary, and we just ask those people to question those assumptions about whether we need to treat animals in those ways."

Plus, recent reports have brought animal abuse to light in a way that has a negative economic impact. In February, the Department of Agriculture recalled 143 million pounds of beef from a California slaughterhouse - the largest beef recall in U.S. history. It was prompted following an undercover Humane Society of the United States worker who presented video evidence at the slaughterhouse showing plant employees abusing sick and weak cows. A subsequent review found that some "downer" (sick or diseased) cows may have been included in beef purchased by the government for the National School Lunch Program.

Baur sees these things as part of a move toward a future in which such practices will be outlawed.

"I think that factory farming has gotten so far out of line with what most citizens consider to be acceptable that change is going to be inevitable," he says. The factory farming system, he adds, "is extremely inefficient - it uses vast amounts of resources, pollutes the earth ... and has negative impacts on human health. The United Nations came out with a report last year talking about how the livestock industry is a greater contributor to global warming than the transportation industry," he says.

And while he knows he can't enforce change or expect every person to go vegetarian or vegan, he says, he simply presents people with information and allows them to make their own decisions.

"And I look at the positives," he says. "I have seen thousands of animals abused in most horrific ways in the past 20 years, but I have also seen animals come to the Farm Sanctuary and be transformed from being fearful and abused to being loved and flourish," he says.

"And as I travel and speak to people and hear their stories of learning to live more compassionately - that inspires me."

Farm Sanctuary co-founder and president, discussing and signing his new book "Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food Presentation"